One of the prompts was what accessibility means to you personally, and I thought this would be a good time to talk about that.

I’m multiply disabled. I wear a hearing aid in one ear and am low hearing in the other; I wear thick glasses because I’m legally blind(and am completely blind in the right eye.) In addition to this, I have a chronic pain condition which puts me in a wheelchair for conferences, because the fatigue I experience on my feet after 4 days is more than I can bear in order to live my life.

Accessibility means never having to struggle to read my dice during high stakes game — no squinting no having people shout out the answer of my dice roll before I can declare it for myself. Accessibility means equal access at cons – it means being able to get into the elevators with my wheelchair – it means not sitting on a panel and having to correct someone’s use of the “r” word in public.

Accessibility means being able to read a character sheet by myself. It means never having to wonder if I need to bring my own interpreter to a panel so that Deaf attendees can participate in a dialogue which includes them.

I’m disabled, but my needs around accessibility no longer are just about my needs. I’m lucky in that my community surrounds me at each con, supporting me as I wheel from event to event – I’m lucky that when I am frustrated by access, I have people to lean on.

Accessibility means community. It doesn’t just come from policies at conventions, or game publishers shifting to a more accessible model of publishing. It comes from communities reevaluating what inclusion means.

Imagine how much less frustrating it would be if when you attended a con with a disability, people didn’t give you ugly stares when you got your badge at the special services desk. Imagine, if rather than people ignoring the wheelchair, as one rolls across the dealer hall floor, people stepped out of the way. It’d be amazing if a white cane was noticed, and people let me through, didn’t scream at me if I tap their leg with my cane.

Accessibility doesn’t just mean what happens at the game table – disability access means community shifting its expectations and stepping up to make room for us at every community event. In the end, accessibility means never having to say “I’m sorry” for being who I am and how I function again.

One of the spaces which is often criticized for being the least disability friendly is that of LARP spaces. Live Action games do often rely on an amount of physical ability that assumes certain mobility aids aren’t in place, but this is not the case, not even remotely. That being said, there’s a lot we can do to make LARP games accessible to gamers with disabilities, and the first thing I want to talk about is adaptive devices or equipment used by people with disabilities to assist in their daily lives. Things like wheelchairs, hearing aids, or prosthetics. Something which I have been normalizing at conference games I help run is that we make an announcement noting the mobility devices and actual adaptive devices being used, so that players don’t take them away or use them as props during gameplay (which actually happens). A player with a disability may not have their character have the same disability – or they might choose to not have a character with a disability at all. That’s okay. Before we even get into the game, though, we should be asking players what they want. I believe that telling people about adaptive devices is a safety concern, but what the adaptive device is used for should never be revealed without permission.

By making these announcements, we’re normalizing the idea that players with disabilities are in games with able bodied players. When we normalize that, adaptive devices stop being seen as props, because we subconsciously are aware that actual people with disabilities are playing in games with us. Shifting how we approach adaptive devices in LARP means we create a more welcoming and safe atmosphere for those of us who need those devices. A wheelchair being used by a person who needs it changes the way we book a space for a game. A blind character being played by a blind player changes the way that everyone in the game treats that disability. It changes from a joke, to a legitimate character trait. By making our spaces accessible to adaptive devices, it shifts to making our stories accessible to disabled characters. By making that shift, more players get to reflect themselves in a game, and feel welcome exploring news stories. Accessibility is sometimes a small shift which pushes towards big changes, and this is one I think we can implement to make a big change.

At GenCon this year the esteemed editors of TheIlluminerdy approached me to talk more about disability in their space. I wanted to focus not just on bringing disability into games, but on small, concrete things we can do as nerds to create the space for disabled gamers. When they asked me what I wanted to call it, I knew what the title would be right away: Illuminating Spaces. Why? Because bringing light to the darkness is always going to be my problem as a visually impaired gamer. If I can’t see my game, then I’m not playing. If I can’t hear the GM, then I can’t participate. If the only way into a LARP space is up several flights of stairs, then I, or other people, can’t be there. Illuminating Spaces is about radically transforming our nerd spaces, one small step at a time, to include gamers with disabilities at every game table in the world. Each month, I’ll bring you a concrete step for a different game or genre, whether it’s a character sheet that I’ve developed for low vision players, a way to make your LARP safe for someone who is Deaf. Hopefully, if you read this and it helps you, the audience will generate more questions that you’d like answered. Questions that I might not know to ask because I’m disabled. I hope that together, we can illuminate nerd spaces to be more inclusive, and to make a brighter and more friendly face of gaming for everyone, regardless of ability.